When the Levee Breaks
by Reno Spiegel
Summary: The Turks, twenty years later. A letter with a diamond seal and a card with an arrow. Elena learns how to breathe again, for better or worse.
1. mama, you got to move

**Author's Note: **Here's something: I started writing Final Fantasy VII fanfiction in elementary school. I'm in college now. Everything else has changed, but I still come back home – how lovely that feels.

* * *

_There wasn't even a chance to knock before he answered. He caught her by the wrist and wrenched her elbow against the door frame, knocking the gun out of her hand. She remembered how thin his fingers were and then he used them to wrench her to the ground. She felt pressure come down on her left ankle – she'd always known that telling him she'd sprained it in school would come back to bite her in the ass someday._

_She didn't move. It wasn't a time for moving. It was a time for some serious reflection on both their parts. When he finally took pressure off her ankle, she rolled to her back and looked into his eyes. He looked so much older than she'd expected._

"_We died," she said._

"_I know," he replied. "I sent flowers, just like I promised."_

_She scowled. "He fucking hated flowers."_

_He grinned. "I know. Isn't it great?"_

_- - - - -  
_

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

- - - - -

It was rainy. It was always rainy – Meteor had made sure of that. It had created streams of wind that had never stopped circling the Planet, lapping at the sea and carrying rain back and forth over the port cities.

Junon was practically a floating metropolis now. The sea had started to erode its underside, but the new, humanitarian ShinRa was constantly employing more people to go beneath it and maintain the gargantuan air tanks that made sure it stayed afloat. On a particularly tumultuous day in the water, the roads would shiver ever so slightly, and a driver might notice more bumps from the buckling of the highways.

Scarlet had practically elected herself mayor of the city. She said it was the only place that still had any class. Cigarettes were made in bulk, not in basements; they sold real diamonds instead of mythril knockoffs; sometimes they would host opera groups from Cosmo Canyon – "Cosmo has class, too," she'd admitted, "but it also has sand; it has lots and lots of _sand_." – and the major businesses would buy packs of tickets, send their employees out for nice dinners on the corporate dime, make them remember the arts. Scarlet had sworn off militaristic action since the crisis, and made herself into a fitting public figure.

No one could really get past the crisis. Probably the healing process would take a number of generations. In a few generations the winds might cease and the divide might disappear. People took one of two stands on what had happened: either they refused to talk about it, to acknowledge the tragedy, or they were so wrapped up in it that they wanted the reality to remain and for nothing to be changed.

Midgar was a quarantine zone. The combination of toxic material, Mako, and unknown supernatural energy had made the city only more uninhabitable. The raging fires had burned themselves out within a year, but word had come a few months later that there were still surviving scientists locked in a bunker beneath the old ShinRa headquarters. Hojo had barricaded them in when he'd gone mad, and they'd been turning the place upside down for chemicals when they found an emergency radio. After a number of exchanges back and forth with the government of Junon, the consensus was that, given there were means and knowledge for the production of edible material, the survivors should do their best to create a small community and society, and assistance would come when the city was once again safe for a rescue crew. The evolution of language had turned the survivors' speaking habits into incomprehensible scientific jargon, but communication had been kept and there were reportedly three children that would take over when the need arose.

ShinRa had immediately reevaluated its goals and nearly closed its doors. The public address set to be broadcast all across the Planet via television was hijacked, however, and the populace was faced by a small black cat wearing a crown, explaining the need for organized cleanup and a strong workforce to which the public could connect and through which its wishes could be developed. It said not to give up and for the public to keep its eyes open no matter what it looked like. Recognizing the cat as Reeve's puppet Cait Sith, Scarlet found him and demanded an explanation. No one had details between that and the next press release, but he'd made a strong enough case to keep ShinRa on its feet. He was voted in as president shortly thereafter.

The Planet was rebuilding itself, but the process would not be as swift as its near-demise.

Elena felt the same way, a lot of the time. She was living comfortable in Junon, of course, but almost two decades later, she couldn't get past what she had seen. She was still rebuilding herself, but she had to figure out who she was first. "A temporary fill-in" was what she'd been signed up for when Reno had gotten his arm broken on the Sector 7 pillar, and all of a sudden she found herself facing god-like swordsmen, eco-renegades, and the true face of ShinRa Electric. The first time she'd called home to tell her mother about what they were having her do, she was met with a strange man's voice. He said simply, "Never use this number. Never give this number to anyone. You have no mother. She has no daughters."

Tseng had been there to comfort her. It was then that the Turks became all she had for a family – in retrospect, that had probably been the point.

She'd never married; never had children. She, too, had relocated to Junon, hoping to connect with the childhood she'd spent with her father there – but all she could think about were things like Rufus and his parade, and Heideggar's laugh. She'd thrown her television into the bay with the rest of the city's trash, because it never had anything too hopeful to say. She opened the blinds for the sunset, and the sunrise if she was awake, but otherwise nothing. She paid her rent by slipping an envelope under the door – her landlord had no idea who she really was, or rather had been. She went grocery shopping, but it wasn't hard because she lived above the store. She only used one clerk and only said "Thank you."

She'd rationalized it one day by explaining to herself that it wasn't a lack of faith in humanity, nor overarching loss of hope because of the state of things – it was because she'd become so adapted to the life they'd given her. All she knew were mission briefs, data analysis, tracking, hunting, progress reports, noon meetings, employee evaluations, fighting, wounding, killing, burying, and making sure no one saw her hands shake. She'd bought so far into it that she wasn't sure there was another way to behave, and she was afraid to try it. Even though she was almost twenty years older, she was still afraid she might be a Turk before a person.

But she could thank them for making her self-sufficient. She hadn't needed anyone else for years now, hadn't made a phone call in so long that she occasionally forgot people communicated with the electricity that just turned on her lights and her blender, toaster, egg-beater. She did get the mail, though. She wrote terse letters to Rude and Reno and often got responses. They were the only people she had any sort of communication with these days.

So when she got the letter, the diamond-shaped seal over the flap, she knew exactly who was trying to say what to her. She sat at the kitchen table, left hand dipping a tea strainer into a cup, right hand shivering just slightly as the paper settled into it, but she could still read it just fine.

-

_To Ms. Elena Simms:_

_As you may know via your involvement in the company, ShinRa Electric has_

_been engaged in a process to revamp both the company's function as well as_

_its image. Such adjustments have included the employment of more janitorial_

_staff, the renaming of the Weapons Development Department to the Safety_

_Procurement Division, and increased work to translate the messages of the_

_Last Seven beneath the ruins of Midgar._

_I send this letter to regrettably inform you that your current department of_

_employment, the Investigative Division of the General Affairs Apartment, more_

_commonly referred to as "The Turks," has been subject to a nomination and_

_subsequent vote of disbandment. The nomination passed 17-6, with two_

_members of the committee abstaining ( Ms. Scarlet Chassity and Mr. Andrew_

_Veraldei ). In short, your payroll account has been removed from our records_

_after a severance deposit had been made, and your standing within ShinRa is_

_that of "formerly employed."_

_If you have any questions or concerns in regards to this change, or if you wish_

_to apply for employment within another of our divisions, please contact me personal-_

_ly at the number on the attached card. My extension is 650588._

_Respectfully,_

_Fiona Fringe_

_Senior Consultant_

_ShinRa Electric, Inc._

_-  
_

Even after Tseng had died, the Turks had stayed together as sort of a renegade outfit within ShinRa. After the building itself was gone, however, they struck a deal with the board. "In our line of work," Reno had said at the meeting, "it's not like we can just go out and be receptionists. We can't function without that fear that someone's going to harbor hostility and bomb our homes, but we also can't function without paychecks. As payment for our involvement in the Meteor incident, we're here to request an annual salary until the company deems it fit to let us go." Scarlet had agreed and they'd left the room, left the building, and soon left each other alone.

The letter in Elena's hand said what she'd figured it would say: the company officially deemed it fit to let them go.

She looked over Fiona Fringe's business card, but it wasn't the one she was really interested in. She was thinking about the other card in the envelope, the one that was placed under Tseng's explicit orders. When he'd founded the Turks, fueled by memories and caricatures of fellow street gamblers and thugs that were in their own way "too good" for that lifestyle, he'd given a request for one piece of information to be passed down the lineage of the company. He'd insisted that any letter of termination be accompanied by a white business card with a black arrow on it – that was all. He said that the Turks would understand.

Elena reached into the bottom of the envelope and retrieved her card. There it was, inconspicuous as anything else: just a plain white card with a hand-drawn arrow that pointed out her kitchen window.

She closed her eyes for a moment. It had been eighteen years since their last mission. Eighteen years since they met AVALANCHE in the tunnels, Rude had been nicked fairly well by a flying star, and they had looked at each other wondering just how long it could last. Eighteen years since they'd been told that their leader, their friend, their comrade was found with a sword run through his stomach. It had been eighteen years since the last time they went to a bar, the last time they all met for dinner, the last time she'd made sure she was taking her tie off the coat rack and not Reno's.

If she thought hard enough, she could still smell them.

In eighteen years, though, she'd never made another friend. She'd never really connected with anyone the way she did those people – and if not them, then at least that job. She'd felt more uncomfortable in her own skin than in the navy suit in her closet. She could still feel the texture of their specialty paper in the employee files, and she knew she could probably still snipe birds from the telephone wires. She'd never really disconnected with the lifestyle. She'd never let Tseng go and she'd always hoped she might get a letter one day that read, "Fuck sitting down; let's keep going." She'd been so much younger than Reno and Rude, who knew how to disengage and remember the life outside the clothes, that she'd never been able to do just that.

When she'd signed the contract, she'd pledged her life to the Turks. She'd given up her family and her life for a team she was only supposed to be on for a few weeks. She'd been a SOLDIER recruit. The only thing she couldn't change once she was a SOLDIER was the Mako injection. She could've gone back to the way she'd lived, outside the company, but they'd said she'd have to sign the paper anyway if she wanted to be a temporary Turk, if only for legality. She'd committed herself to following every order of her superior, and when he was gone, she barely knew what to do.

When she'd signed the paper, she'd read the condition of the business card. Tseng had been alive then and she'd said "Yes, sir," by putting her name on the line. She'd always wondered if it would come to this: the ShinRa envelope under her door, the word that she was officially on her own.

She made her own decisions now.

Elena had stopped dipping the tea strainer some time ago, and her feet found the cold wood beneath the chair. She stood slowly, testing this newfound world, this world without a leash tied to ShinRa Electric. She made the same walk she made every night to her bedroom, but this one felt different. She wasn't just walking into her bedroom this time.

The closet doors creaked open. Suddenly her clothes looked boring. The blouses she only wore around the house looked flimsy. Her jeans were dull and she felt like she was as stale as they were. She climbed up on the small ladder – "Hell no; she's too tiny," Reno had said around his cigarette when they'd hired her –, hand fumbling around the shelf for the box she hadn't moved in years. When she had it, she walked to the bed and put it down, opening the lid among a cloud of dust.

In all her years watching the people of Junon wander their streets, she'd seen a lot of people carrying guns, but she still knew that hers shot better than theirs. No matter how much people had spent on a suits, she'd always known that they didn't fit them as well as hers would fit her. Industrial-strength bleach had kept the collar of her dress shirt from yellowing. She always took off both her sleeves at once, so it was still tucked neatly inside the jacket. Elena thought that perhaps the folds had permanently damaged the fabric, but she pulled it out and it looked no worse for the wear. It felt healthier than she did.

It felt more comfortable than anything she'd done in almost twenty years.

She couldn't help it. She found herself stripping her clothes off, watching scars from the job learn to breathe again as she did. When it came to putting the suit on, it was muscle memory; one sleeve after another, flawlessly tucking in the shirt, getting her holster settled and her gun into it, stepping into shoes that were tied at just the right spot, bending her knees to make sure the pants wouldn't hinder her if she had to jump a fence. She'd lost weight since the job, and gotten only slightly taller, but she still felt at home in the moment.

She could almost feel her dissatisfaction with her choices melt away. She felt like she could talk to every cashier downstairs, make a thousand phone calls, paint her nails, throw back a few shots and laugh outrageously at the bar now, because no one could touch her. It wasn't only the physical part of her that felt like she was where she was supposed to be; it was like she actually was twenty years younger, rolling around the Gongaga jungles with her teammates, ducking shrapnel and firing out car windows.

Her mind came back to Tseng's card in the envelope. He knew and she knew that they would all be getting them – Reno, Rude, and herself. They all knew what that card meant, but she wasn't sure they would actually follow orders. Tseng had died and times had changed and her friends had moved on much sooner than she would. They'd probably gotten soft and forgotten how good it felt to stand at attention sometimes.

Still, it tugged at her. She wasn't sure how long she had been standing there in that suit, just listening to her own breath, but the back of her mind was a black arrow on a white field, pointing out her front door. Under her breathing she could hear Tseng in the President's office, saying that it didn't matter if ShinRa knew what it was sending – the Turks had it covered.

The Turks had it covered.

She remembered the time they'd met and she felt like she could fall in love with the way he spoke and knew just what he wanted in life. She'd never met anyone that seemed so without regret. Even in the SOLDIER bunkers she could hear crying at night – but Tseng never looked behind him. She remembered how it had felt to have that taken away from her, and now to have the company taken away from her. The letter in the envelope had severed her one tie to Tseng, as fictitious as it was, and only with a pair of sunglasses in her hair did she realize how infuriated she was.

She knew she had to go, and she knew why. She knew she had to follow his last order, or she would never be satisfied with herself again.

She took nothing. She knew that everything would be just the way it was when she got back, whether it took days or months. She didn't have a car, but she suddenly didn't need one. She knew that it would work out because something within her told her that Tseng was guiding her now, and he hadn't failed her yet. She took her suit, her sunglasses, her gun, the white business card, and nothing else. No identification, no responsibilities, no gil – the way they used to go into a job, even their dental records forged.

She felt like she could breathe again.

She felt alive.

She felt dangerous.

* * *

**Author's Note: **To my old readers: It's been a while, in a number of ways. So hi. Nice to see you again. How have you been? Would you like a multi-chaptered story? Hopefully? Okay. I haven't written prose in a while, so please go easy on me. But y'know, fuck sitting down; let's keep going.

To my new readers: Let me explain what Final Fantasy VII is. It's a video game made in 1997. It was not made recently; it was never played on cell phones; there were never movies or videos or books, except the ones that we've written. If you try to tell me anything otherwise, I'm not going to hear you.

Now that we've got that out of the way: Thank you all for supporting me, seven years later.


	2. taught me to weep and moan

**Author's Note: **illist keeps me writing these days. Say hello to him in the comments. We've been single-serving friends for years upon years now, and he's always stoked the coals when the evening starts to wear on.

Thank you, illist.

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

_- - - - -_

She'd known enough to get in a boat, to ride it around the southwest shoreline and start there. She had only a vague notion of what she was going to do once she got there – she had a gun, but she wasn't sure that meant she was prepared or safe. She had learned to expect that the movement from point A to point B would have a few letters in-between, but she'd been out of practice long enough to forget what they were.

The company she was keeping in the first leg of her travels wasn't ideal by societal standards. She'd gone down into the docking area in Junon, knowing that only seasoned sailors would be in the waters with them acting as they were, and that she needed one of them. The docks had become a duality: on one hand, the general public was afraid to go to them because of both the waters and the types of men and women that could actually take anything less than a cargo ship into the waves; on the other, those same people were frighteningly skilled with their craft, and a few were at least mildly pleasant to the right kind of company.

Elena had read enough articles to know that some of these sailors had been ferrying people across the sea since Meteor had fallen, some friendly, some haggard, some asking for gil, some for silence, all of them just pushing back and forth and taking in the last natural space on the Planet.

Whether it was the suit or the way she held herself as she stood on the pier, a few sailors had backed away from the landing before the old man turned his motor her way. He was wearing shorts and a raincoat, despite how cold the harbor was, and there were grooves on the sides of the boat from where he'd used his oars over the years. She'd learned about sailors through her childhood playing in this very harbor, and had learned enough about unsavory people through ShinRa. Putting the two together, she'd spotted this man as her guide from almost half a mile out into the waves, and had to assume he was one of those that rarely set foot on the docks.

Elena had a flash of a mission they'd gone on, the Turks, when Tseng was still with them. Reno and Rude had gone undercover as potential business partners to a wealthy drug trafficker in Costa del Sol, saying they would do business with him, but only out on the water. She remembered his stomach rumbling as he laughed, leading them to his prized speedboat and rocketing out from shore with them. When they returned, Tseng was perched atop the villa with a long-barreled sniper rifle, and put a hotbullet through his throat. Elena was on binocular duty, mostly to make sure no one noticed the self-sealing wound appear on the target's neck, but she remembered that his eyes had looked so dim. He looked like he'd been at the controls of that boat forever, going in a straight line so long that he'd forgotten to appreciate where he was.

When Elena met her guide's eyes, they looked nearly the same. He kept his boat a fair distance from the dock and looked at her firmly. His hands were hardened by the salt water and he was missing a few fingers from who knew what. Glancing around the docks, she saw a handful of others that looked to be in the state he was, and numerous others that looked more healthy and less menacing, but she felt like a dog in a shelter and knew this man would take her home.

"What's your offer?" he called. His words were just one more noise on the busy docks, thumping with the footfalls of various boots.

Elena nudged the gas can at her feet. She had enough for a trip across the sea, she figured – and if she didn't, he was bound to have a reserve supply. "It's an advance," she replied. "This now, to get to Mideel. Once we're there, I'll get you enough to get you back here, and then some. And some bread, if the baker's open – do you eat bread?"

The old sailor paused a few seconds more and Elena watched him weigh the choice in his head – she knew that look as well as any other in the world. Slowly he paddled toward the dock, his solemn, silent affirmation that she would be his company for the trip, and she helped him tie the rope around the pole at the end. He stepped up only for a moment, to take the gas can back down, and she momentarily measured herself not much shorter than him. His raincoat was cracking in places from the sun, and his jeans were beginning to bleach themselves, but she doubted he thought much of it. She wondered how many fights he'd been in, as small and old as he was, because of some young sailor trying to monopolize the business.

She remembered Don Corneo and straps around her wrists. Her trigger finger twitched – she'd never been able to shake that habit after her first kill.

The old man helped her into the boat and pointed at her seat, different from the rest of the boat by way of a flattened pillow tied around the bench. Something told her that it was the best he could afford his passengers. There was a jug of fresh water next to the gas can, and various dried fruits. Chocobo feathers lined the underside of the lip around the boat – Elena reflected upon her childhood once again and remembered the superstition that the luck to find enough Chocobo feathers to ring one's boat in was luck enough to travel in any waters. Superstition or no, she was oddly comforted.

She asked how long the trip usually took and he answered, "Two days." He hesitated in untying the rope around the dock and glanced over his shoulder, but she set her eyes the same intensity as his, telling him just as silently that she was sure she wanted to go.

He pushed out from the docks and sat down at his own post, hooking up the new tank of gas and starting the engine. Looking into the dark skies over the sea, the sun setting off to the right of the horizon, he pulled his hood over his old head and gently spurred them against the waves.

The night was long and she knew she nodded off a few times, but each time she awoke she could just barely see the outline of her aged caretaker, and it looked like he had barely flinched. She didn't bother to check her watch, despite the fact it had a light – what would it get her? He'd said two days and he certainly knew the route better than most of the sailors they'd left behind, so she'd wait the two days and then she'd set foot on land again. She'd become much more fatalistic after the breakup of the organization. The sleep wasn't refreshing, but it helped to pass the time, and she didn't imagine he felt a loss of comraderie. She imagined he was used to people sleeping the trip away.

The waves tossed his craft up and down in great bounds, but the air was nice and his experience kept them from too much turbulence. At some point the rain came, and he made a short humming noise to see that she was awake before tossing her another raincoat. She fingered the stitching on the inside and realized he must've sewn a new lining into it – slipping it on, she felt it was heavy and the inside was made of some sort of down to keep her warm as well as dry. The air was nice enough, but what coverage it did provide was appreciated. She thanked him quietly, nothing was said, and when she opened her eyes again, the sun was rising over the same sea it had put to bed.

Reexamining the boat, he had drunk only a bit of his water over the evening, had shed his coat for his bare skin and left it lying in a heap next to him, but was still looking over the sea with those dull eyes. His skin was tanned by the sun, slightly warped from what must've been threads of post-Meteor chemicals still carried on the wind, but his constant awareness and occasional rowing had kept his body in prime shape. Age would catch him before sickness ever did.

It was still raining – it would rain all the way to the shore, she imagined – so she kept the coat, only sort of wondering why he'd gotten rid of his. The answer came a while later, in one of her moments between sleep. She opened her eyes, the world having turned from sharp and salty to bleary and full of post-sleep aftertaste, to see the old man standing on the back of the boat, next to the motor. His toes were curled over the sides and a hand rested on the engine, which had been killed at some point during her nap, and it looked like a moment of divine presence that kept him perched where he was.

She wondered if he ever thought about jumping in and swimming until his arms gave out – relieving himself of his self-prescribed duty and joining the Lifestream. Elena wondered if she ever felt the same, but the gun at her hip and the business card in her inside pocket said she was still following orders – and she preferred that structure.

Had it been anyone else, she would have called out, asked him to get them moving again. But she spied a knife at the back of the boat and figured it was best to let him have his moment. They should all be so lucky as to have a moment of connection with anyone, these days.

That night she awoke to the sound of soft plucking at the bottom of the boat. She imagined that a school of fish – whatever fish ShinRa had released on the Planet so long ago – was nudging the craft because it had passed over some sort of reef. However she barely heard the old man say "Hang on" before the boat gave a giant heave to her left, nearly flipping her off her seat and into the water. She heard her guide grunting and scrambling as they settled again, but the knocking continued and she must've jumped a few inches when his gun went off. The first shot was the only startling one, though, and each one lit his scarred wrist in the darkness. Three, four shots later, she could hear his labored breathing over the sea, but not much else. Their attacker was clearly sinking to the depths.

She was surprised that he said anything, but he did: "You okay?" His voice was startling against the silence, perhaps because his breathing was heavy, and perhaps because he sounded so much younger than when they'd first set out.

"I am," she responded. "Are you?"

He was still standing at the side of the boat – she hadn't heard him move, anyway, and the Turks had given her acute enough hearing to know movement in any weather. "Water Zoloms," he replied. "'bout five years ago, Zoloms took to salt water – not just swampers anymore. They got these weird kinda hands now, too; 'tap the boat a few times, feeling for heat, then give it a good heave to shake the captain loose. That's the only way we keep the boats afloat when one of 'em hits – give a good heave back the other way and go for the gun."

Elena was looking at the stars, like they might help him tell the story. "I appreciate it. I didn't even see you had a gun."

"Shame," he murmured, "'cause I saw yours."

She stayed awake the rest of the night, but nothing else was said. For all the corporate training in the world, she understood that her guide knew a lot more about staying alive than she ever would. When the sun came up again, the lowlight of land was in the haze in the distance, and his long-barreled revolver was on the floor of the boat next to him. She tried to meet his eyes, but he just stared where the bow pointed.

She still had no idea what she might do once she made it to Mideel. She knew people there, of course, but what would she say to them? Would she show them the card, let it speak for itself, or would she try to explain it in her own words? Was Tseng enough to speak for her anymore – was anyone even going to listen to what he was saying, especially eighteen years later?

She pulled the old man's raincoat tighter about herself, feeling the boat ride the waves. Suddenly she wasn't sure she wanted to be here at all, on the way to somewhere. She thought she might live forever in this boat with the old man; when he died, certainly somewhere in the middle of the sea, she might just close his eyes, lift him off the starboard side, take up the oars, and row for years to come. She had some strange respect for him and the way he lived, constantly going back and forth and trying to help in his gruff, silent way.

Once there had been a fire during one of their raids. The entire house had almost gone up in flames, and Reno was still inside, because he'd tripped down the stairs and neither Elena nor Rude had noticed. A beam of the roof fell in, however, snapping them enough out of their trance outside the house to notice that one of them was missing. Rude had turned just as fast as he'd come out, diving through a window shoulder-first because the doorway was clogged with flame. A few minutes later he'd come out with his redheaded best friend over his shoulders, slogged to his knees, and crumpled under the weight. When the three of them were being treated for smoke inhalation not long after, Rude's sunglasses still perched on his nose despite the soot, Elena saw his ring finger twitching ever so slightly and she knew how scared he had really been, whether it was that he was in a burning house or that he might not get Reno out of it. She had had so much respect for him, too, in that moment – being able to look past the guise of a Turk and actually feel something, even if it didn't mean saying it.

In the present, too, she was knocked out of her trance. The old man was surprising her once again, saying, "When did people stop telling stories?" She didn't respond – she was certain he wasn't talking to her. "Grow up, and it's stories, stories, stories. Stories teach us the Planet. Stories teach us the way we are." He took a long pause, then actually did look her in the eyes. "Shame," he echoed the night, "that some people don't get to tell stories anymore, let alone hear 'em."

When she set foot on land again, leaving the coat with the old man, he was as silent as ever as he untied the rope from around this new dock, staring back out to sea.

Elena called out, saying, "I promised you bread. From the baker."

"That's why I took you," he said, not looking back. "The baker closed ten years ago. Clearly, there's something you need here."

He turned his boat sideways and she saw a number of small dents in the side, probably from Water Zolom attacks. Elena's gun felt heavy against her uncertain leg, and she stood watching until the old man disappeared back into the perpetual rain over the sea. In two days, she imagined, he'd be pulling up to a dock in Junon, probably looking down the bow of the boat to someone else that needed a ferryman, and he'd sail back into the night on another story.

She nodded toward the water, turned on the dock, and started the walk toward Mideel.


	3. don't it make you feel bad

**Author's Note: **I'm spending my summer bathing in music, literature, and good company. And I'm going to finish this story, if only for my own entertainment. So if you're sticking with it, stick with it. We'll see the finish line.

**Advisory**: The last part of this chapter is a rape scene. It's not graphic, I have no experience personally, and I'm sorry if I've made it unrealistic or upset anyone by writing it without knowing it firsthand. My email is on my profile for any comments, questions, or requests to remove it, most of which I will honor.

Feel free to skip it if you're not sure of it – I'm making sure that it's not _absolutely essential_ to the plot to give you, the reader, that freedom without feeling like you missed part of the movie.

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

_- - - - -_

Mideel had changed. She'd known that.

After the Lifestream and its residue had leveled the town, the politicians had urged everyone to take up a year of residence somewhere else, for both safety and for legislative reasons. The same politicians had taken the year to move to Cosmo Canyon and contemplate what might be found in a new Mideel. Certainly the residents wouldn't want to come back to the very same town, as it was, when it had turned their lives upside-down.

They'd turned to Kalm and began rebuilding on that note: a more quiet community, still specializing in medicinal training, with a smaller tourism industry. It had only backfired in the latter respect. This brand new Mideel became its own sort of attraction, but the inn owners still had jobs and thus it was a sacrifice worth making.

Still a little unsure of her legs, Elena found herself wandering through the roads of the relatively new town, wondering if it was all just an overpriced ruse to buy time before the next Lifestream leak. She knew Reno would have – and probably had – ranted and raged about the façade and what it had done to his hometown. Junon had stayed the same – industrial, full of trade and wanderers – so while Elena couldn't relate to such a complaint, she thought she might at least be in a position of empathy.

The town had shrunk, too. She noticed clever diversions away from the parts of town the Lifestream had completely destroyed, giving the whole place a very strange shape. Boys and girls on bicycles were using this to their advantages, racing from one end to the other.

One thing that hadn't changed, as far as she could remember, was the town newspaper, The Mideal.

"It's supposed to sound foreign," a memory of her redheaded superior told her, "or old. Or foreign. Some fucking thing." He'd taken a drag from his cigarette, flipped to the obituaries, and written something on the cuff of his shirt.

Today the paper told her that the Last Seven were still doing okay, considering the situation. A few messages had been translated as generally positive, something about being able to sustain themselves at least until Midgar was out from under administrative quarantine, and the minor headlines only held local news for which she had no frame of reference. She turned to the Visiting section, though, which she knew would tell her the most popular places to eat, stay, and visit for tourists. The number one spot this week was The Breaking Day, a family restaurant across town, and she wandered that way.

Many of the people in town were wearing sky blue ribbons around their wrists, but Elena wasn't sure what they were there for. Something she'd always respected about Mideel was its sense of community, and Reno was living proof of that. Even after years in ShinRa, he still pledged allegiance to the town, refusing any mission that involved any offense toward a fellow resident.

At one point she and Tseng had been sneaking in the back door of a known Mideelan arms dealer that had given a bad price to the Don. They'd been hired to go take care of her, or at least teach her a sizeable lesson. Tseng, as usual, had gone first, creeping through the kitchen and toward the living room with his shotgun drawn. "Pellets," he'd explained to her wide eyes. "I can fire these at someone's legs and just hurt him enough to drop him – not kill him." He'd been turning the corner into the hallway when he jolted, raising the gun. Before Elena had a chance to take hers from its holster, there had been a loud crack and Tseng was encased in a familiar golden pyramid, swelling large enough to wedge itself firmly in the walls of the house and making both it and its occupant impossible to pass. By the time she'd gotten out the back door and around the front of the house, their dealer was bolting down her dirt road on the back of a motorcycle whose tires, Elena had a feeling, were bulletproof.

They hadn't checked Reno for an alibi. There had been a bouquet of flowers – Reno's silent "I'm sorry, but you understand" – on Tseng's desk by the time they were back at the ShinRa Building. The profile for the hit had disappeared from the company computer system.

Elena was taking her time, still working out exactly what she was going to do when she got where she was headed. She fingered the business card in her pocket, hoping it might point her in the right direction both figuratively and literally. She had hesitated many times over the past few days, thinking about Tseng's frequent clashes with the rest of the company that had made even Rufus once confront him about his loyalty. Still, she found it hard to betray a comrade's dying orders, and pushed herself on.

She stopped in a millenary shop briefly, asking for directions to The Breaking Day and telling herself that this was the right thing to do – at the very least, in the name of honor. "Down the road," said the woman in the shop, "a left at the grocer, and not too far from there."

Elena followed the verbal steps, hoping this was indeed the right direction.

She thought of the old man in the boat and the directions he took – that they were directions that were given to him, yet seemed to be taken on his own accord. He was completely in control of where he was going, though his very life was dedicated to reading the maps of others. Elena thought she might tell his stories to people when she got back to Junon – even if she made them all up.

"Did you know," she might say to someone headed toward the Mythril Mines, "that Zoloms are in the seas now? They've got hands, and they tap the boats for echoes."

The same children whizzed by her on their bikes again, and she increased her pace. She was nervous, and not only for what she would have to do. She was more nervous that he wouldn't be here at all – and then what? What did that say for the card in her pocket, and for her enhanced memory, and for all the moments they'd shared, learning each other? What if there was no restaurant called The Breaking Day at all, and the blue ribbons on the residents' arms said that they were all in on the joke, that some great administration was laughing at her right now? Blue _was_ the color of the Turks, after all – what if they all knew that she was coming here to play out the rest of ShinRa?

She kept a beat in time with her steps, tapping the handle of her gun under her jacket. It was all that kept her from turning and running, from holing up in her apartment in Junon and never answering another letter, never buying another grocery.

Then she saw him.

He was standing against the side of the building, fumbling with a lighter. He was less deft with one than she remembered, but the long red hair couldn't have been anyone else's. He'd traded his suit for a T-shirt and jeans, but he was still in shape under the sleeves. No glasses – he'd needed reading glasses before, which had always been his personal shame, but he refused to get the ShinRa-provided surgery, saying he'd "seen enough of their shit to not risk seeing it _with_ their shit." She still couldn't see his eyes, because she was far enough away.

The shock of seeing him there made her trip for a moment, losing her cool, and he looked up at her as the gravel crunched under her feet. A few steps later, he looked back down at his lighter, and Elena had to admit her fault. It wasn't Reno at all, just someone about his age that looked startlingly like him. With all the people on the Planet, the coincidence wasn't uncalled-for – besides, if one Mideelan looked like Reno, probably another one would.

Elena kept her eyes on the man all the way to the door, but tried not to stare too heavily. He turned his face toward her with a warm smile, saying, "Hey, I'm an intern with the newspaper, and I'm doing a random poll of residents and visitors for next week's release. It's just one question. Are you left-handed, or right-handed?"

It had been a while since she'd thought about it, really, but she thought about where her gun was and said, "Right-handed."

"Thanks," he chirped, then lifted a boot and swung his heel hard against her wrist.

Suddenly the redhead wasn't the friendly doorman, and she'd been caught enough off guard for him to be able to shove her toward the alley, pushing his forearm against her shoulders and keeping his kicks at the backs of her ankles. He knew how to fight, certainly, but she didn't know how to come back without her hand or the advantage. She heard a gate kick into place behind her – no doubt something they put up at night to keep kids out from between the buildings – and her cheek hit the wall, pressure coming down on the back of her neck.

"Turk," he growled, barely keeping his voice restrained. "Turk, Turk, _Turk, goddamn Turk_." It was nothing less than a hiss now. He grabbed a handful of her jacket, pulled her gun out of its holster, and threw it down the alley. "Twenty fucking years it took you to get here," he said, shaking her. "_Twenty years_. Do you know what I've done in twenty years, _Turk_? I've waited. I've lifted, I've run, I've waited, and I knew that someday, somewhere on the face of this fucking Planet, I'd come across one of you."

Her head was swimming and her blood was pumping. She'd never seen this man before, and she clearly wasn't as on her game as she'd hoped. She'd worried about the suit, hadn't known how it would go over to make a statement like the Turks were still breathing, and her fears were answered. More surfaced when she heard him fumbling with his belt.

"I couldn't take the big guy," he whined, hysterical. "Nah, I saw him around, and I tried it, but even know he could just bat me away. 'know how embarrassing that was? _Huh_?" he insisted, shaking her again. She heard fabric. "I decided that the next time I saw a suit, it'd be different. I'd start it, I'd do it, I'd end it. No fight. Just like this, _Turk_."

"What?" she managed to gasp, hoping to stall him even a little.

His sharp hips ground into her, his arm still pinned against her neck, his other hand working awkwardly, pawing furiously at the waist of her suit pants. He kept enough force on her head to close one of her eyes, throwing off her depth perception. She didn't have any weapon besides her gun, and it was somewhere next to the trash outside The Breaking Day.

She heard him crying, but no less dangerous. "Biggs," he whispered, close to her ear. "Biggs, Jessie, Wedge. My friends, my friends, my _best fucking friends_, my hometown, everybody I goddamn knew. I barely kept it cool when AVALANCHE was around anymore – I kept wandering around, hoping I'd run into one of you fucks, hoping one of us would kill the other." He shook her again, and she felt a breeze on her thighs. She was almost crying now. "You don't know how that _feels_. That _helplessness_, that _hope_ that some car's going to run you down at night. Wishing you were _anyone, anywhere_ other than where you are."

She knew it now. His arm went away from her neck, around her front, the other at her hip. He was there, too much of him against too much of her suddenly, and she had nowhere to go.

"Well I can't drop a goddamn sector plate on your family, _Turk_," he growled, throwing his entire weight against her, and she didn't know where he was or where _he _was because he was touching every part of her and all she could really do was try to keep her neck from breaking against the wall, turning her forehead against it, closing her eyes and letting out a cry and a gasp, "but I can drag this out for as long as I need to, make you _feel_ twenty years of hopelessness, make you _know_ how it feels –" His breath hitched, and her fears were affirmed and the tears were hot on her cheeks. "Make you know how it _feels_," he repeated, breath labored, "to be invaded, torn apart, fucked over."

It was an hour, it was a second, it was ten minutes, it was twenty years. It was too long and not long enough before he was done, and she couldn't think enough to bring a hand behind her to stop him, and she couldn't move one leg without another to throw it at his shin. His head was against her neck and then it wasn't, though, and then he turned her around and grinned that predator's grin, reaching a hand out toward her dress shirt, shifting his weight, when a sharp popping noise rang out, his ears split and opened, and he fell into a heap.

Elena was still crying, too afraid to take solace in anything, only hearing the faint jangle of thin chains as she slid down the alley wall, scraping her back all the way down and tearing her jacket. So much for the shiny, new Mideel, she thought – it was still full of people with the reptilian brains of Turks, set to rape you in any alley on a twenty year grudge. She heard the body of her attacker being dragged clumsily down toward the garbage, then her gun being slid across the ground to knock into her exposed hip.

She still sat curled against the wall, but her eyes quickly dried when she felt the barrel being pressed gently against her hairline.

Looking up, her own eyes met two egg-white circles where pupils should have been, inches down from a pair of sunglasses perched atop a bald head. Towering six and a half feet over her, wearing a dark red suit and brown tie, eyes misshapen and morphed, was Rudolph Hurst, ex-Turk.

"Stop it," he mumbled, "or I'll blow your head off."


	4. prayin' won't do you no good

**Author's Note: **This chapter comes with a huge thanks and dedication to Jess Angel, who has been one of my favorite co-authors and companions over the years, and her barrage of reviews to remind me that I promised a number of us that I would finish this.

Also a thanks to Tini, who probably doesn't frequent this site anymore. A few years ago he let me borrow her 'verse from Northern Lights, which I would argue is _the_ quintessential piece of Turk fanfiction in history, and I've borrowed it just slightly again. Hopefully she doesn't mind, wherever she's gone to.

* * *

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

_- - - - -_

She'd stopped crying. She knew she couldn't afford to spend the time on it. She had to be a Turk again, and that meant that her problem was supposed to be over now – her threat had been taken care of, and whatever the damage, it would be assessed when the task itself was over.

Her insides turned – sacrificing the need to be human for the need to be professional.

Elena wobbled to her feet. Her legs refused to support her, her knees buckled again, and she tore whatever part of her suit pants were around them when she hit the ground. Once again she felt the gun again.

"Not. Fucking with you."

She heard razors in his voice. It was the same tone he'd used when President ShinRa had been killed and Palmer had suggested it was their fault for not being more alert that evening. "Security was tight as it could have been," the bald man had said between clenched teeth. "AVALANCHE. The building. _Sephiroth_. We did what we could." Palmer's shoulder had been bruised from where Rude had clapped it. They'd hit the bar that weekend, damn near emptied it, and Rude had still gone out for a run that night.

Her legs found their strength again. She stood, still barely coming to his neck, and tried to assemble some sort of composure. She tried to look anywhere but into those balls that used to be eyes, but he clearly wasn't going to let that happen. The barrel was at her chin, tipping her head up to face him.

"His name was Johnny," her old friend said, looking deadly. "You never met him. He almost died when we dropped the Sector Seven plate. Killed a lot of his friends. He's dead now, and you're not. End of the game."

She almost said thank you, but it wasn't exactly the situation for it. Her head was swimming and she barely knew left from right, let alone good conduct from bad. Then she saw it: he wasn't looking at her. As many missions as they'd gone on together, she could tell that his head wasn't aimed quite the same way it used to be, and neither one of them had budged in height. "You're blind," she said, venturing.

"You sound just like my doctor," he snarled.

She felt a pang of guilt, all things considered. "What happened?"

"Johnny tried to shoot me a few times. I shot him. It happens. End of that game, too."

"No," she corrected, "I meant, what happened to –"

He knocked her head back with the barrel of her gun and she cried out. Part of her front tooth flew out of her mouth and she almost dropped to the ground again. Blind or not, he knew where _everything_ was, and there was no question about that.

"Blind," he repeated. "Not deaf. Nor dumb. Doesn't matter. You got your letter?"

Her hands began to shake as she looked him up and down. Not only was he still huge, but he was still in perfect shape, and out of his breast pocket stuck the tip of a black arrow on a white business card. Certainly he'd been able to guess what it was all about. He could've told their paper from anyone's. ShinRa used special paper, manufactured right in the building – "People like to forge documents, pretend they're sending these dangerous little packages from one department to another," Heideggar had wheezed over the copier one day, her training day, "and we like to send folks like the Turks to the return addresses. Assessing the situation, as it were."

"Y – yes," she stammered, the hiss making her gums throb.

Rude sighed heavily. "Don't be shy. You're here _because_ you got your letter. No reason to be shy now." He grinned, something new for him. "Besides, not like I saw anything."

Tears stung her eyes instantly. She almost couldn't see. The memory was the freshest wound she had outside of her teeth, and it hurt like hell. "Fuck you," she whispered.

Rude put his gun into its holster at his hip, a holster she hadn't seen before. He opened and dropped his suit coat, tossing it far enough away to suggest he wouldn't need it for a while. He kept what used to be his eyes fixed vaguely on her, and it was more unsettling than threatening. She didn't explore how much he could discern, though, because he clearly wasn't having any crack and fun and games today. "I got in again," he said. "Not the Turks. Someone else. Local, no gil involved officially – we're like town security, but no one hired us. Win-win. Enforce the law, and you rise above it. Remember?" She didn't say anything. "Jack-offs, though. Stole our look. Suits. I think Reno started us, but I never asked. I've been in for eleven years. Place to sleep, food to eat, same old same."

"What do they call you?" She didn't have her gun anymore, and her hand still wasn't in the best of shape. Mako had helped them heal themselves faster – bruises were almost nonexistent in their best of days – but it had been a while.

"Jackals," he spat.

_He would_, Elena thought. The Jackals had been Reno's dream street gang. As proud as he'd been of being from Mideel, he liked to fabricate his past to strangers a lot of the time, and a morose confession to Elena at one point had revealed that he still harbored his childhood dreams of having grown up on the streets. "My sister, she would've been in on it. Maybe she'd've died at some point, given me some great reason to join the grimy cause we're in, whatever the fuck it is." Only once had he confided any of this in Elena, one night that a few too many drinks had been had and a bit too much trust had been found inside the both of them. The next morning she'd thought she'd been out the door before he was awake, but he called from the apartment balcony that her buttons were mismatched, and they'd never spoken of it again.

"Fuck," Rude growled. "Are you daydreaming? Where've you been for twenty years?"

Elena, too, slipped off her jacket as she spoke. "Alone," she admitted. There were too many dynamics to this whole situation. Tseng. Reno. Rude himself, and the Jackals he was playing with. Johnny. The rape. The fact that she didn't have any time to really regain herself. The old man in the boat, living a life of such harmony and rhythm. "I – I moved back home," she stammered. "Back to Junon. My family's all gone, but. I've been living off what ShinRa gave us."

"You got out."

"I got out."

Rude, once one of her best friends with one of the calmest demeanors, had been abrasive throughout the entire encounter, but hearing that she'd stopped her ways crossed some line in his head. Tearing the holster from his side, his gun all sparks and jangles as it slid down the alley, the bald man's hand looped around the back of her neck, throwing her to the ground. "Coward," he shouted. "You goddamn woman, you goddamn _soft_ woman. _Turks_ don't quit. _Tseng_ didn't quit. He's still giving us orders, whether we like it or not, and you just _stopped_?"

Her defenses went into effect. Suddenly he wasn't Rude anymore – he was a colossus, poised to fall and crush her. He didn't have a name, like none of her hits had had names, really. Everyone was just a reason, a method, a resolution, and a retrospect. And this man, this huge bald man in just a vest and a pair of slacks, with a tie and two misshapen, almond-shaped eyes, was just an everyone at this point. She clenched her toes, felt something shift beneath her foot in her dress shoe, and kicked her former companion's thigh with all her might.

The blade protruding from the toe of her shoe caught him squarely, sent him grunting and gasping – more in surprise than in pain – stumbling against the hard rock wall of the alley. He misjudged the distance, his elbow slipped and skinned itself, his head bounced hard against the same wall that might have been his salvation, and his neck bent the wrong way to press itself against the stone.

She hadn't needed to hear the snap, but she did.

Rudolph Hurst, ex-Turk, her savior of ten minutes ago, lay dead in the alley.

Elena sat panting on the ground. Scuffles must've been nothing too new to Mideel, really, because no one had shown up the entire time she'd been there. She looked first at the new body in the area, then down to the pile of garbage that no doubt held Johnny. She didn't know how many guns were in the alley – two, three maybe – or who would come by to clean it up, but she knew she needed to leave before someone did.

Elena stood once again, spitting blood, and gathered her things. Her coat made her feel safer, like it still gave her some sort of authority, even though they'd been disbanded and she was far from home.

_Enforce the law, and you rise above it_.

Was this what Tseng had wanted? One of his best comrades to stumble, break his neck, and never get up again? There was no honor in it. There was no challenge, nothing brave – he'd gone blind at some point, his hand missed the brick, and he'd broken his head open. He'd knocked his own head so hard against the wall that his neck broke. Was that a Turk's death? Did she have that to look forward to – someday she'd go out to get groceries, trip over a candy bin, and never stand up again? Did SOLDIER training amount to that? Did helping take Sephiroth down train her against human clumsiness? If not, had it been worth it at all?

Elena couldn't stand it, whether _it_ was what had just happened or her own thoughts.

She walked over to Rude's body, doing him the little respect she could in closing his eyes. She wouldn't do the same for Johnny – she hoped somewhere in his pupils was some sense of regret, and she hoped that it would get photographed, put on the front page news so everyone understood why nothing else _could_ have been done for him. She would have shot him again, but it was no use and part of her knew that.

Her fingers shakily found the business card shakily in her pocket and removed it, turned it over, away from the black arrow. On the back were four blue ribbons, taped in place by Tseng once this generation of Turks had been chosen. Gently prying one off the back, she knelt in front of her former friend – _former_, she thought, _but I don't know if it was because of him or because we had to part someday _– and reached out for his hand. It still felt normal, like it had the last time she'd shaken it.

She stopped thinking of Rude as Rude; instead, she focused on her new mantra: _reason, method, resolution, retrospect. Reason, method, resolution, retrospect._

Elena took the limp index finger and tied the ribbon around it. This had been one of the conditions of the contract. When someone else was gone, they were to use these ribbons to mark them as Turks – "We're motherfucking Turks," Reno had howled in the office when one day their conversation had migrated to this stipulation. "They're _gonna know_ who we are." The local authorities would take the bodies and give them over to ShinRa for proper burial. They couldn't risk losing anything, like identities, fingerprints, or dental records. The entire team had to be literally vaporized.

_Reason, method, resolution, retrospect._

Elena tore out of the alley, almost flinging the chainlink gate into a boy on a bicycle, still riding back and forth without a care in the world. His friends shouted something at her, something like _bitch_ or _watch out_. Her foot slid on the loose dirt, something like an apology, and she heard the click of her knife with each step she took, coat flying behind her, hair disheveled, knowing that she had to get into a building and into a room and into her own private space.

She didn't register when she made it to the inn, nor when she got her room. She did register the gouges she made in the wooden staircase as she stepped up to the third floor, again that knife coming out just below her toe, that knife that was sticky with blood and rough with gravel, that knife that had unbalanced the colossus and let her tie a ribbon around its finger, like a reminder to take medicine or something.

Between the door and the bathroom, she left a trail of suit, weapon, and dirt from her shoes. She'd retracted the blade when she'd taken the right one off, manually, by pressing the button on the bottom of the heel, and it thudded into place like the colossus when it hit the ground.

She didn't bother with the cold water, scalded herself to get rid of all of it, scrubbing off Johnny and the boy on the bike and the old man in the water and the colossus – Rude – her comrade – her friend –

Her mantra faltered. She ripped the shower curtain from its rod, the shower pelting her body, red marks blossoming from not only the water, but from anxiety, the furious rubbing that turned into scratching at her own body like she was trying to separate it from the rest of herself. She couldn't think of her three R's, her repetition, what thing she'd found to give her a sense of purpose in all this.

She found words she didn't want, let alone need, like _fear_, _regret_, even _betrayal_.

She found the bottom of the shower.

She found the strength to curl into a ball, clench her teeth, and hope that it would drown more than the sound of her body twisting and turning around the ring of the tub.


	5. find your way home

**Author's Note: **I yawned a bit, but I didn't fall asleep on this story, I swear.

* * *

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

_- - - - -_

Elena shut down for three days. Whether it was Johnny or Rude, she suddenly had no idea what to do with herself.

Tseng, the beacon of leadership she'd had before, suddenly seemed a sort of false prophet. All he was going to lead her into these days were torn clothes and dead friends, and she didn't feel like a traitor at all when she threw the card with the arrow into the trash can, stopping herself just short of setting it on fire.

She hadn't crawled up in bed and forgotten how to live, but she'd lost focus on anything. She'd forgotten to pay for her second night's rest until an envelope was slid under the door, a letter inside asking that if she was going to stay again, she had to either answer the door when the management knocked or send someone down with her second night of gil. Embarrassed that she hadn't even _heard_ a knock at the door, she put the gil into the envelope and left it at the top of the stairs. _Someone_, she thought_, will get some use out of it._

She was eating, but infrequently. She didn't want to die, but she didn't want to think either, and the middle ground was to lock into a surreal haze, amble around her room straightening the prints on the wall, shower just so she could clean the tub, arrange and rearrange the different things on the shelves and on the sink counter. She watched television and reacquainted herself with the news, finally grasping a slim notion of what was happening in the world. Though no one on the news was saying so, Meteor was a continuing problem, and no one knew how to cope with it or how to deal with the fact that it was still something to cope with.

She felt dirty. She'd stolen Rude's wallet and was living off what had to be his savings.

Elena had come to terms with the fact that Rude was dead, and that she had had the biggest hand in it. She knew she'd been raped, but she refused to deal with it, which was probably the main component in her mental lockdown. She'd heard sirens shortly after she'd checked in, but mum was the word on what had happened. _Procedure happened_, she thought,_ and that's the way it should be_.

She wrote letters to where she thought her family might live – wrote numerous copies of the same, in case they were in different places. An address in Junon was where the first would go, then to Costa where they'd always wanted to retire, a few different friends' houses in Kalm, places like that. She spent the afternoon writing them, reading one aloud to see how it sounded in her own, real voice – trying to connect with even herself, which was becoming increasingly more difficult the more she decided not to think about.

She had to think about it, though, at the end of her third day at the inn. There was a gentle knock at the door, and she put her shirt and pants on before opening it. She had tried to distance herself from the suit and thus had been roaming the inn room in the nude since she'd gotten there, aside from room service visits and now tonight. At the opening of the door, the wife of the inn owner – "You get to know people," Tseng had said around a grin, "_especially_ people that own places you can sleep in." – was holding a large white box with a delivery slip on top, addressed to _Ms. Elena Slimms._

Her stomach turned. The Turks had taken to calling her Slimms because she was so small compared to the rest of them.

Simple math told her who had sent the package.

She thanked and tipped the woman who had delivered it, not even worried about being recognized and called out on her former affiliations. She took the box to the bed and set it down, much the way she'd laid out her suit just over a week ago. The box was a trademark of ShinRa, and in it were clothes that were much more casual than the suit she was used to retrieving from it. A T-shirt and loose jeans confronted her, but not before a letter on top did. She took the hair tie from around it – _Nice _touch, she admitted – and opened it, not surprised that it was short.

-

_Rookie,_

_I know the score, and I know you're in town. I understand that this isn't easy, but if you have to come_

_see me, wear this. I got out years ago, but my landlord's smarter than I like to admit and I don't need_

_her thinking I'm back in._

_Reno.  
_

-

He always put a period after his signature, small and inside the loop of the O, so that anyone he sent mail to knew it was authentic. She hadn't needed the persuasion this time, but she was living proof that old habits were meant to die hard.

For a moment she was angry, and it was nice to feel it. The letter insinuated that his landlord was going to have time to form an opinion on him after the meeting – if there was one – like he knew he was going to be around afterward to defend his name. The anger faded, though, because it was just typical post-ShinRa Reno that wanted a clean image, not so much a questioning of her skill as a killer. He would have delivered it himself, or come to visit, if he'd thought she couldn't take him down, but his keeping his distance was a nod enough to her talent.

Elena stared at that box the same way she'd stared at her suit, and each one had just as much weight. This time, though, she put the lid back on, tucked the letter into her pocket, and put the box in the bathroom under the sink, hoping feebly that it might get dripped on and ruined. She stripped off her garments, too, placing them with some unintentional reverence on top of the same box, and climbed back into bed.

She returned to the television, trying to have an opinion on the Last Seven under Midgar, but he'd hooked her like a fish. As much as she tried to not care, that package had reminded her that not only was there something to be done – there was Turk business to be done. Much like bloodlust, there was still something appealing about being able to make a name and image for the blue suit, as much as she rejected hers right now. He gave her the option of not finishing the job, but it had reminded her deep down that there was a _job_ and that its only possible status was _to be finished_.

She turned the television off.

The silence was deafening, like the moment after which the final note has been played but no one has applauded yet.

She turned out the light by the switch on the wall, and considered the suspended red digits of the alarm clock on the nightstand. She'd been dumbly staring at the television for almost an hour, thinking and rethinking that there was something she couldn't avoid doing as long as someone else knew she was supposed to do it, and it was nearly one in the morning.

She lie on her back and closed her eyes, determined to get a real night's rest for the first time in three.

_Tomorrow_, she thought.

_Tomorrow I have to see Reno._

_

* * *

_

**Author's Note: **Writing these introverted chapters to Secret Chiefs 3 music is definitely the way to go. I recommend it.

The finish line, as they say, is in sight.


	6. if it keeps on rainin'

**Author's Note: **I've been squirreling away pieces of poetry and fiction for almost a decade, assuming that someday I'll publish and sell copies of a book with them in it. And yeah, I've been excited about writing a lot of those. But here I am, worked up and goddamn _charged _about the very_ act of writing_ this story, which can't really be used for anything except the pure entertainment of myself and others. I haven't felt that since I put together Hellmasker in the summer of 2002.

I imagine that this is the euphoria that relapsing alcoholics feel – just without the suffering.

* * *

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

_- - - - -_

Elena awoke just after eight the next morning, but forced herself to stay in bed for a few more hours, eyes closed, thinking in a way that was just short of praying. She didn't know exactly why, but there was still something comforting about the notion of a higher power, as many of them as had failed her up to this point. Holy hadn't worked, the Cetra hadn't really been cast in a favorable light inside ShinRa, Tseng was. . .well, Tseng hadn't done much for her either. Still, now she found some sort of purpose in the beckoning of Reno, a purpose that let her take up the clothes she'd sent him, trash her blue suit, straighten the room before she left, and step outside into the brisk morning.

Even an ex-Turk in her mid-forties could appreciate the weather.

That thought alone made her physically stop and survey the area. She hadn't thought about her age in a long time, even before setting out to dissolve the Turks by any means necessary. Especially during this trip, though, she occasionally forgot that she wasn't twenty-six and still able to dodge bullets by jumping out of windows. She truly felt like her body was eighteen years younger, infused with Mako and in its prime. When she thought about it, though – how long it had _really_ been since they'd worn the suits full time –, she realized that Rude must have been in his fifties, that Reno wasn't far behind, that Johnny had to be around their age by looks alone…

What would the AVALANCHE members be doing these days? Highwind – who she'd always found some fondness for – must have been pushing seventy, but he was probably still up in the air pushing other things. She'd heard that Barrett Wallace also hadn't settled down at all, but had become an attorney instead of continuing his life as a terrorist and was widely known as one of the loudest voices in a courtroom. She knew that Nanaki had taken over Cosmo Canyon after Bugenhagen's death, and that Godo was still kicking in Wutai and hadn't given it over to his daughter, but those were the only names she could put futures to. The others must have been doing something – it would have been all over the news, even as minimally as she followed it, if they'd died – but they must have been completely different people. Had they had children? Did they still talk?

What happened to glory, twenty years later?

As if she'd looked at the other side of a scale, the children on the bikes whizzed past her and broke her from her gaze at the sidewalk across the path. She started walking into the other part of town. A closer inspection of the white box revealed a return address scrawled on the border of the back, and she didn't peg Reno as a person to lie to his comrades, former or otherwise, so she figured she could find him if she tried hard enough.

Age was funny, she thought. For all intensive purposes it didn't matter a bit, because there was no inherent change to be found from one year to the next, but not seeing someone in a number of years was like hearing that she or he was just on the other side of a door – _everyone_ was going to open it, because there _was_ inherent curiosity in the unexplored.

Elena didn't date go near The Breaking Day again. She knew that no one would call her out for anything, but she certainly couldn't walk past that alley again. Her stomach twisted itself, and she stopped thinking about it instantly. She'd always prided herself on the control she had over her thoughts. If she didn't want to think about something, she just didn't. She did stop for breakfast somewhere else, though, because she hadn't had a real meal in a while. It was so good to her out-of-practice tongue that she tipped well beyond what was necessary, remembering with some rue that it wasn't her gil she was spending anyway.

She recited the address to her waiter, and once he told her roughly where to go, she began the inevitable walk, feeling like she was facing the gallows.

Reno's place was much more humble than she would have ever imagined. He had the upper apartment, much like she herself had near the bay in Junon, but there was nothing garish attached to the house, nothing flamboyantly Reno to announce his presence to the town. The only thing she saw that signaled any life at all was a cat perched between the window and the curtain, but when she crept closer, she saw that it was stuffed. Perhaps it was a ruse to make other residents think that a normal family lived there – or maybe he was just into stuffed cats these days.

Elena almost grinned at the dry humor that crept back into her thoughts, like Reno's property radiated it.

She couldn't stay lighthearted too long, though, and she knew it. Not wanting to postpone the inevitable – or maybe she just didn't want him to be too prepared – she pulled her gun from the waistband of the sweatpants she'd been given and approached the door.

There wasn't even a chance to knock before he answered. He caught her by the wrist and wrenched her elbow against the door frame, knocking the gun out of her hand. She remembered how thin his fingers were and then he used them to wrench her to the ground. She felt pressure come down on her left ankle – she'd always known that telling him she'd sprained it in school would come back to bite her in the ass someday.

She didn't move. It wasn't a time for moving. It was a time for some serious reflection on both their parts. When he finally took pressure off her ankle, she rolled to her back and looked into his eyes. He looked so much older than she'd expected.

"We died," she said.

"I know," he replied. "I sent flowers, just like I promised."

She scowled. "He fucking hated flowers."

He grinned. "I know. Isn't it great?"

"Have you changed at all?" she snarled, finding a bit of Rude creeping into her voice. "We're here to kill each other and you're still cracking jokes?"

Suddenly his eyes hardened and he tapped his foot, extending an identical blade to the one she'd killed her other companion with. He wagged it in the air in front of her, and she found herself flinching away from it. "I figured," he said quietly, "that it was better than gutting you on the front porch, but we both know the deal – if I have to do that, they'll take the body off and won't even touch the doorbell." He had a dagger in his belt, too, and he was taking no pains to hide it. Out of the business or not, he kept himself armed. "Now do you want a drink, or should we go straight to blowing each other away?"

Her silence spoke for her.

Reno turned and walked back into the house, nudging her gun with the shoe without the knife on it. She picked it up as she, too, crossed the threshold into the living room and closed the door behind her. She could hear him now, explaining the meeting to a curious neighbor – _"Oh, that?" he'd laugh. "Just a cousin and I roughhousing it. Thanks for checkin', though. You want some scotch?" – _and she wondered why she didn't shoot him in the spine as his disappeared into his white kitchen.

The whole apartment was uncharacteristic of what she'd imagined him having, but in retrospect it occurred to her that she hadn't ever _really_ thought of what Reno's housing might look like. They'd never had a get-together at his place because he'd always seemed to be between company-assigned housing, disputing with tenants in this building and that, supposedly lighting fires that led to a few too many complaints to the superintendants. Tseng had had a small house that had been in his family for years – "The corporate part," he'd explained, "not the Wutain nationalist part." – that was completely fitting for dinner parties, and Rude actually lived in a mansion that was reputed to be cursed. When he'd signed the papers, he'd just muttered, "What? My hair gonna fall out?" and they had been childishly amused.

Reno's apartment, though, looked like it might hold a small family led by a very old couple. The shades were drawn behind the stuffed cat, the carpet was well-kept, shag, brown. The couch was probably a few decades old, but had also been taken care of, and the television was probably always fixed on the news station it was now, but muted, with subtitles and tickers telling the stories. Nothing new was scrolling by, at least as far as she could tell. There was nothing on the walls, an ashtray and burning cigarette on a low coffee table, and a hallway that probably led to a bathroom and bedroom. It was almost barren in terms of clutter – he had a few books, some spare electronics, a clock on a small table against a wall, and an umbrella stand with two umbrellas, a hiking stick, and his mag-rod. She was almost amused to see that he'd kept it.

"Here."

She jumped at the sound of his voice – which she reasoned was understandable – and barely caught the bag of ice he tossed at her from the doorway to the kitchen. He had two beers in his hand and had already started on his own, more subtle proof of some sort of endless faith in her. He was willing to start inebriating himself even now.

Still, he had the knife drawn out of his shoe.

They kept distance from each other as they sat on the couch and she opened her own can, nursing her wrist atop the bag of ice held on her knee. She had plenty of time to look at her former companion in the low lamp light, notice the lines in his face that were inevitable in age but still so unexpected for someone that had seemed unfazed by the concept of getting older. His cheek scars almost blended in with his wrinkles, exaggerated, she supposed, by years of stressful day after stressful day. Though he'd laughed a lot, he'd also considered a lot of things, and they were much heavier. He sat today in a muscle shirt, and she could tell that he still lifted weights as religiously as he had when they worked together. His left leg, though, wavered slightly back and forth, and he seemed to have neither control nor consideration to spend on it.

"What happened to your leg?" she had to ask, breaking the still.

He turned and his eyes looked like those of an old bloodhound, drooped and defeated. He still had a grin for her, though. "Somebody cut my Achilles one night. Hid under my car. I hopped in and backed over her. I mean, fuck knows I don't notice anymore, so that's a point for me, but I think she won the fight in the end." He held her gaze for a few more seconds. "You've aged well, Rookie."

"You haven't. You look like hell."

"Well, y'know, I'd hate to break character." He cracked another smile, took a swig of his beer, and turned his eyes back toward the television. "The anchors've all changed since the sound went out. I don't even know what they sound like, but it's like we've been best friends for years."

No matter what he said, it was still interesting, and she'd always admired and resented him for that. The more she thought about it, most of his characteristics seemed to have that pattern – she loved them at the same time she hated them. "Do you ever miss people?"

"Hah," he barked. "You _do _know the score." He meant that it was obvious that none of them had been able to socialize since ShinRa had been done with their services. "Naw, I don't miss 'em too much. I see other people from around here, and that's all somebody from Mideel needs – their own people. Other than that, I say fuck 'em." He drank again, like it was a sort of punctuation to his thoughts.

There was a heavy silence.

"Rude went blind," she blurted, unable to help herself. She'd wanted to not bother with catching up; she would've rather just gotten this over with. But she was watching his leg move back and forth and the way he was rolling the bottom of the can up and down his forearm, the other crossed over it, leaving a small trail of condensation from the back of his hand halfway to his elbow.

Reno grunted. "I heard. 'doesn't surprise me at all. He started injecting Mako after they let us go. It gave him a hell of a kick, but after a decade or so, bumping up the doses, it starts t'kick back. Rude's terrified of doctors, too. Wouldn't've seen one if you'd dragged him." He paused, his eyes straying. "Was, anyway." He turned them on her. "You knew he went blind, though, and here you sit. I take it he's over?"

"Yeah," she said, tensing, "he's over." Reno had always described people and jobs like games, saying that someone was _over_ once they'd been really dealt with.

He was out as much as he could be – but only that far.

"Good," the redhead replied with a nod. "Procedure's procedure. Besides, he got fuckin' weird. I thought the Jackals'd calm him down, but I guess nothing really could." Reno faded in and out of a drawl from time to time, something he'd picked up on the roster of the Turks. He had to go undercover, and when he did, he always tried to emulate that street life he'd desired as a child. The problem was that he ended up undercover so often that his very way of speaking had morphed into a hybrid of Mideel and a mock-Corel dialect. The one time AVALANCHE and ShinRa had met post-Sephiroth – which was a disaster on its own, as could have been expected – Barrett Wallace had nearly knocked his head off, assuming he was being mocked.

Reno's leg was moving a little more than it had been, and Elena ventured a sort of guess: "What really happened to your leg, Reno?"

She only got the twitch of his lips as an answer, and she drank a bit more.

"You ask a lotta questions," he said after a moment, still watching the television. He was rubbing his thigh now, too. "What happened to you, though? Where'd you go for eighteen years? Fall off the Planet at all, forget all your friends?" He said the last word with a bit of mockery, like the idea of them being friends was something he was still mulling around in his head. When she didn't say anything, he mumbled, "Yeah, sorry."

"'sokay," she said, matching his tone. "I moved back home, back to Junon. I got myself an apartment and kind of started over. I just never got to that whole "meeting people" part." She took another swallow. "I got fewer and fewer birthday cards every year, and when they stopped coming, I decided I'd wait for something to happen. Twelve years later, here I am." She tried on a smirk of her own. "We come back together to kill each other and end up drinking beer, watching the news on mute. Y'know. Like friends."

Suddenly he said, "You were always nice to me. Y'know? I mean, I was always a dick, and you were a bitch for a couple months, but you never _really_ hated any of us, and I think I appreciated it. Shit, I guess it was nice to have somebody that wasn't shooting at us and wasn't pissy because she kept getting shot _at_. Y'know. Like a friend or something."

She suddenly wished he'd kept sending birthday cards, and that the first piece of mail connecting them hadn't had a white business card with a black arrow in it. She even kind of missed the one night they'd shared, telling each other what they'd really wanted in life. Daringly, she reached out a hand and laid it on his forearm, hoping for some sort of tenderness and human touch before the inevitable. Calm or not, she had a feeling that it weighed on them just the same, and it suddenly felt almost physically heavy.

"'shame," he said, standing, his eyes still on the television.

She tried to ask him what was a shame, but she couldn't find the words. She couldn't really find any words in her muddled mind, and was suddenly sure that she was going to stay a night, feel that last connection before morning, and that maybe they would do it over breakfast. It would be a nice breakfast, she figured, if he still cooked the way he always had. She could tell he was the type to keep one of those expanding tables around, with the leaves that you put in the middle when company came over. She wondered if he would let her make some coffee, but she knew it was too much of a risk, too much of a fantasy that if she put words to it, it would crumble apart. Instead, she lay down where he had been sitting, closed her eyes, thought about the morning they would share, and let the strain of her journey lull her to sleep.

The bag of ice shifted quietly to the carpet.

Reno silently turned back toward her, reaching down and taking the beer can from her limp hand after checking the wrist for a pulse. He didn't find anything he hadn't expected to. It was still, and all he could hear was the wheezing of his nostril that never seemed to clear over the quiet hum of the television set. A bird hit the window, and the sound echoed much farther than just the walls of his empty apartment.

He took the can to the kitchen and stood at the counter for a long time, looking at the mix of saliva and carbonation on the rim before pouring the last of the drink into the drain. He washed it down with warm tap water.

Elena Simms finally rested the way she deserved to.

* * *

**Author's Note: **My favorite stories are ones that catch even their authors off guard – considering the willingness of most authors to talk about just _how_ much they knew about what they were going to do with their work, this leaves me with a lot of my favorite stories being my own. This one, though, probably takes the cake, and I couldn't be happier.

One more chapter to tie things up, and I think I'll call it a day. Thank you for sticking it out with me thus far, and I hope to see you on the next page.

This chapter is dedicated to Sufjan Stevens, who can make me sob like a baby. If you caught the reference, we should get tea sometime.


	7. levee's gonna break

**Author's Note: **Thanks for coming along for the ride. We're just a few pages from home.

* * *

**WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS**

BY RENO SPIEGEL

_- - - - -_

Reno half-walked, half-fell down the stairs at the back of the house-turned-apartments, letting gravity carry him.

He'd felt slightly awkward asking if he could pay a little extra and have the basement all to himself, probably because he hadn't been used to asking permission at the time he'd moved in, but the landlord hadn't had any problem with him just taking it. "We don't get down there much," she'd admitted, showing her age. "You clean it, you can have it." So Reno had hauled a good deal of junk out of it, boarded up the door and windows, and called it his workshop.

He spent a lot of time in the basement, though it probably wouldn't seem that way to anyone else. There were a few chairs down there, mostly ones from the kitchen that he hadn't had room for, and a counter bolted to the wall. A single light bulb in the middle of the room cast old, dim light on the place, and he didn't want anything else. Being in the basement felt like being in the Turks again – he couldn't see clearly, but he felt completely at home when he did have something to do.

He did most of his thinking in the basement, which was probably why he was going down today.

He clicked on the light as he walked by and took off his shoes on the bottom step, feeling the stone floor on his bared feet. He flexed his toes, his leg giving its usual twitch, and took a final swig of beer. Tossing the can into the trash, he retrieved another from his miniature fridge and sat at the counter to open it. He'd had the cans so long that he knew instinctively which ones were safe and which ones –

Reno tried to put Elena out of his mind. It was easier than he'd hoped it would be.

His old company ID was tacked to the wall, joined by various newspaper clippings about their more high-profile jobs. There was also a photograph of the first Blue Rally in Mideel, an event put together to raise awareness about local crime. Almost the entire population had turned out. The townspeople had started wearing blue ribbons in a kind of quiet resistance to the small gangs that had emerged from the post-Meteor crisis – gangs whose foundations were that the world's destruction at the hands of Sephiroth had been predestination, and that the Cetra and AVALANCHE had interrupted the balance of the universe. In retaliation, crime had risen astronomically as street gangs and individuals tried to "take back the destiny of the Planet," as they put it.

Reno had started the Jackals on conflicted interests. In one side of his head, he wanted some rebellion under his command, some group of ragtag antiheroes of his own. In the other, he'd wanted to see his just how together his community could come, and the response was overwhelming.

Other experiments littered his workbench. He'd taken to restoring children's toys out of nothing but boredom, and he put down his beer to nudge a small car in tiny circles around the gouged wood. He repaired watches and left them to tick noisily in the corners, built picture frames out of wrapped aluminum from his trash, and tinkered with gadgets to see exactly what they could do. He, too, had always admired Cid Highwind – had even respected him just a little.

Suddenly the plastic car's race against itself stopped.

A golden, metal hand was resting on Reno's shoulder, sending chills down his back.

"Motherfucker," he gasped, too impressed to stay silent. "I'd wondered."

A chair slid into place next to him, and he felt the barrel of a shotgun on his neck before the hand disappeared, his companion perching on his seat but keeping his weapon leveled. "A wildcard of sorts," he whispered.

Reno turned his head, meeting the red eyes of Vincent Valentine. "Shit," he swore, almost smiling. "They said that up 'til Hojo, you were the most loyal son of a bitch they could've asked for. They had no clue, though."

"Sure, they did," Vincent replied, curling his metallic fingers around his raised knees. He was dressed as modestly as he could be, golden wrist barely confined to his coat sleeve. "Why do you think they sent me a card?"

The redhead scoffed. "Cheers."

Vincent Valentine had aged just slightly, but he had always been sallow anyway. He had stubble, no doubt from living on the streets and shaving with rudimentary tools, and his cheeks were starting to pull into his mouth. His diet had been less than ideal.

The coffin in the mansion in Nibelheim had halted his life's progression, but his body was still training itself to wear out, in a sense. Where the rest of them had put on eighteen years, Vincent had done experiments on himself, computed the math, and discovered that he was moving at a third of the pace, but that it was speeding up. Hojo had been a sick man, though, and Holy knew if he might accelerate past the normal rate and begin decaying on overdrive. He hadn't held on to too many aspirations, though, which made coping with this idea a little easier.

But there was nothing that either of them had to say to one another. They'd never been friends. They'd only been interested in each other in the professional sense, which left no room for small talk or catching up.

They, too, knew the score.

"I followed her here from Junon," Vincent said, his face devoid of expression. "She's gotten bad at covering her tracks. I lost her for a moment, when she was crossing, but when I saw the bodies in the alley, I knew she must be in Mideel. I paid people to watch the inns; waited outside your door. When you stopped talking, I figured it was over and came in. I believe I shot your pillow, though."

"I'll forgive you."

"That's okay." Vincent tilted his head slightly. It was just an honest statement.

Reno found no reason within himself to be scared. The appearance of Vincent Valentine itself had shaken him to the core for a moment, but the reality was that this was all according to plan. He was actually comforted in a way. Decades out and having fought ShinRa tooth and nail, the long-haired man that sat before him still held allegiance to the Turks and to what signing the contract had meant.

In a way, it was proof that none of them had wasted their lives, and it was the most that Reno could have asked for.

"Do you want a drink?" he murmured.

Vincent considered this for a long while. His arm hadn't moved a millimeter, true to his expertise. They had been looking each other in the eyes, his near-demonic and Reno's ice blue. He had lost track of how old he was, of how long he'd been in the coffin, of how long he'd been in and out of the Turks – and even he was starting to wonder when his body would let itself feel tired. He went weeks without sleeping, days without eating or drinking, and felt like he was perpetually moving for no reason at all. Even experimenting on himself had lost its flair after a few years, and he'd started walking across the Planet then. He hadn't made it far, though, having crossed expanses of land in thought with himself and wondering what it was really all for – walking, staying still, working, living, dying, any of it. After paying a brief visit to Midgar and the old ShinRa building, shielded by his sheer lack of belief in disease, death, and afterlife, he'd settled as best he could in Junon, closest to the Turk that was least likely to notice him, and had waited to meet one of them like this ever since.

Slowly he set the Death Penalty across the workbench and let his feet land on the floor, as much of an affirmation as either one of them could expect he would give. Reno drew his dagger from his waistline and set it on the counter as well. He reached across the back of his chair to the refrigerator, taking two cans from the same side that he'd taken Elena's from. He handed one to Vincent, each still meeting the other's old, tired gaze.

They opened the cans and drank until there was no more to be had.

Reno leaned forward once more, turning on the radio, then he sat back and closed his eyes.

As they sat, eyes closed, the same euphoric fantasies that had lulled Elena into her death washed over him – over both of them.

They bathed in the rich feeling of having the weight of the world on their shoulders, but having absolutely no obligation to do anything about anything anymore.

Vincent suddenly didn't feel so young, and didn't feel like he'd missed out on anything while he slept three decades away. He didn't worry about the killing and the hardship, and AVALANCHE, his weary mind reflected, had been the best possible choice of a path in life. Chaos wasn't in his brain, talking him into doing crazed things to his body, and he was almost giddy when he realized that Hojo hadn't existed at all – that he'd read about him in books and fabricated corporate files. In his last moments, in fact, he was nothing short of certain that he had two real, live, warm, moving hands, and that he was running them through Lucrecia's hair once more.

Reno didn't feel so old, either, and couldn't care less about the twitch in his leg or where all his family had gone or what kind of life had led to him tinkering with children's toys in the basement.

The idea of the Jackals was suddenly funny – how could he have thought that he could replace the warmth and comfort he found in fellow Turks? So Rude had been a little distant, but they would patch things up like they always did. He didn't think that his last meeting with Elena had turned out so bad after all, and that eventually she really _would_ find Tseng and get to tell him how she felt about things. Reno planned on cracking him on the skull for giving them such a scare, but they'd cracked each other tons of times, and usually laughed it off.

As he settled into his chair he found himself sighing, though, because there was truly nothing better than the feeling of sitting in his workshop, knocking back a few drinks in the company of an old friend.

"Nope," he mumbled, fending off a yawn, "nothin' better than that."

* * *

**Author's Note**: The way I write is by watching stories play themselves out in my head, and trying my hardest to capture in words what I'm seeing. That being said, the ending wrote itself, and I really don't feel like I had much of a hand in it. If there's something wrong, I'm probably the person to talk to, but only barely.

In all honesty, though, thank you for sticking around for seven chapters, and for putting up with my self-discovering author's notes sandwiching the story every time. It's beyond appreciated. Moving into a world of "real" writing – outside fanfiction, that is – makes you realize how important a community of readers and writers coming together really _is_ for the spirit of the craft, and I can't thank all of you enough for your support over the years. This website started my writing, and now it's the best thing I've got going for me.

A few chapters in, I started thinking about Jess' reviews to keep me going, and this is the part where I officially dedicate the story to her. It might have taken me 'til the back cover to do it, but it needed to be done all the same.

Here's to the best of days for all of us. I hope to see you around. If you ever want to talk about something, my email's on my profile, and I answer nearly anything. Take care, you lot.


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